When the 2024 boys high school golf season began, Torrey Pines’ team goal was the same as always: Win the state championship.
After some early-season struggles, including losing a dual match against Cathedral Catholic, head coach Chris Drake wondered if he needed to adjust those expectations.
Said Drake: “I told my athletic director we might not make it out of San Diego (for the SoCal Regionals).”
Turns out, Drake fretted for naught. Playing the par-71, 6,664-yard San Gabriel Country Club course on Wednesday, May 29, Torrey Pines added to its golf lore, winning the Falcons’ seventh CIF Boys State Championship. No other school has won more than three titles.
The Falcons’ five-man scoring team finished 6-over par, winning by six strokes over two-time defending champion Concord De La Salle.
“It’s always a bit surreal,” Drake said by phone. “For them to turn it on when it really mattered really shows their character.”
Drake has won four boys and four girls state championships.
“It doesn’t get old,” he said.
As was the case at the SoCal Regionals the week before, the Falcons were led by a senior (Jay Leng) and freshman (Evan Liu).
Leng, bound for Stanford, shot 3-under 68, finishing tied for third in the individual tournament. Liu shot 2-under 69, tied for sixth. The Falcons’ three other scoring golfers were sophomore Roman Damnkoehler (73), junior Ethan Elleraas (75) and senior Colin Li, off to Yale, (76).
The championship was particularly pleasing to Leng. As a freshman, he was on a team that finished second in the SoCal Regionals. (There was no state championship that year because of the COVD-19 pandemic.)
And he was on the Torrey Pines teams that finished second to De La Salle at the state championship the past two years.
“I felt we were too good not to win at least one (state title),” Leng said.
Leng led Torrey Pines to the SoCal championship last week despite battling a 101.4-degree fever. He overcame some adversity to lead the way again May 29.
On Monday, May 27, he finished playing in a junior tournament in West Point, Miss., and was scheduled to fly that evening to Los Angeles. But the connecting flight to LAX was canceled by bad weather. Leng spent the night sleeping on a chair in the airport and flew to Los Angeles on Tuesday morning, May 28, only to learn than none of his three bags — one contained his golf clubs — made the flight. Later, he learned one of the bags landed in San Diego.
Leng and his family drove to San Diego on May 28 and picked up the one bag, which turned out to be his clubs.
“We were so stoked,” he said.
Leng rode back Tuesday night, May 28, to the hotel where the Falcons were staying, arriving about 9 p.m. He teed off at 8:20 a.m. May 29 and carded a round that included three birdies, an eagle and double bogey.
Regarding Leng overcoming adversity two weeks in a row, Drake said: “That’s Jay.”
Torrey Pines’ previous state championships came in 1976, 1981, 2004, 2011, 2016 and 2018.
Classical Academy finished tied for fifth in the team championship. Max Emberson of Westlake Village Oaks Christian won the individual tournament at 5-under 66.
Drake said one reason the Falcons overcame their early-season struggles, including being decisively beaten in two tournaments, is the team’s chemistry.
“Walking around the tournament today, not one of the players said, ‘How am I doing (in the individual tournament)?’” said Drake. “They asked, ‘How is the team doing? Where are we at?”
Leng exemplified that attitude. Heading into the 18th hole, he was at 3 under and knew he was in the mix for the individual title. But instead of hitting driver on the 392-yard par 4, he hit his 4-iron. The shot landed in the fairway and Leng wound up with a par.
Asked why he played it safe, Leng said: “I figured that the team was more important.”
